


Four times they changed the narrative (and one time they started a new one)

by blahdeblahdeblah



Category: Doctor Who (2005), The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, F/F, anyone who thinks there is a doctor who canon should be fired out of a cannon, multi-doctor but not all at once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:20:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28859466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blahdeblahdeblah/pseuds/blahdeblahdeblah
Summary: One Time Lord, two women and a different story.Or, what happens to Clarke and Lexa's lives when various incarnations of the Doctor keep stumbling into them.
Relationships: Clarke Griffin/Lexa
Comments: 7
Kudos: 22





	Four times they changed the narrative (and one time they started a new one)

**Author's Note:**

> Is this crack? Possibly, but it's an idea that's been nagging at me for ages, so I finally gave in and wrote it.

It takes her a moment to realise the wheezing and groaning sound isn’t the gorilla, or the pauna or whatever it is the grounders call it. Clarke Griffin’s life has had many strange, strange parts to it since they sent her to Earth, but watching a blue box appear from nowhere accompanied by the weirdest sound she ever heard is perhaps the strangest yet.

She looks to her companion, the grounder Commander she’s beginning to realise is also a woman called Lexa, for confirmation her mind hasn’t finally cracked under the stress and the wide-eyed disbelief she sees is confirmation enough.

“Is this Skaikru?” Lexa asks.

“No, I have no idea what it is.” Clarke replies, realising the box has writing on it. Police, she has time to notice but not process before the door opens. She sees a man – shaven head, leather jacket, ears – and a glimpse behind of him of something her brain dismisses as impossible.

“Hello!” He says, his face breaking into a wide grin. “Don’t suppose you’ve seen a Nestene Consciousness around here, have you?” Neither of them know how to reply to that. “Big ball of energy. Brings plastic to life. Ring any bells?”

“Pauna!” Lexa shouts, suddenly looking away from the man and his box, pointing at the dark shape rapidly closing on them. “Run!”

“We could-“ she hears the man say, gesturing towards the box, but she can’t wait and she’s running too, and then he’s following them, feet expertly dancing over the broken landscape as he moves, guiding them through an alleyway and round a corner behind a wall to find some temporary safety.

“I’m the Doctor, by the way, what’s your names?”

“Clarke. Clarke Griffin.”

“Lexa. Just Lexa.”

He looks around. “This isn’t London, 2005, is it?” Clarke shakes her head. “Of course! Warp shunt wake! Knocked me off course. What year is it?”

“2150.” Clarke says. Her brain is screaming at her that everything here is wrong, she’s in danger but somehow this stranger – this Doctor – feels like a calm point in the middle of a storm.

“Doesn’t feel very 2150.” He shakes his head. “Sorry, still regenerating, brain’s still cooling down. Let’s sort out your gorilla, shall we?”

* * *

“Do you ever think about the Doctor? The man in the blue box?” Clarke asks her.

“Sometimes.” Lexa says. “To remember it happened.”

“Never told anyone else?”

“Who would believe it?” It’s the first secret the two of them shared, something they can only talk about with each other, and everything that’s brought them here to the tunnel under Mount Weather probably stems from those strange few hours.

“I haven’t either. Wait. Someone’s coming.” They push back against the walls, hiding in the shadows. Lexa hears soft footsteps, then electronic noises. Slowly, she leans out, glimpses a flashing blue light in the hands of a thin man in a long brown coat, an oddly pointed shape of dark hair on his head. The light and the noises are coming from a device he’s pointing at the walls of the tunnel as he walks far too casually down it.

“That is not a mountain man.” She whispers to Clarke.

She nods. “Let’s find out who he is.” They wait for him to get closer then spring out from the shadows, Clarke swiftly behind him to pin his arms to his back, Lexa in front with her blade drawn and pointed at his chest.

“Oh hello.” He says, in a tone far too jovial for a man with a blade at his chest. “People never do get bored of waving swords at strangers, do they?”

“When the strangers are in the way of freeing their people, no.”

“Freeing people? That sounds –“ He leans forward, making her draw her arm back before he impales himself on her blade. “I know you, don’t I? Wait! Lexa Just Lexa and –“ he turns his head around “- Clarke Clarke Griffin. Hello. No gorillas this time?”

She looks at him. There’s nothing about him that looks like the man they met before and yet the voices she carries with her tell her that one title can carry many faces. “Doctor?”

“Yes.” He answers. His face is serious for a moment so brief she barely spots it, but she senses something in him is curious about how she knew that so quickly, and she does not know whether attracting the attention of a man like this is a great or terrible thing.

Behind him, Clarke looks between the two of them in confusion, then fear as Lexa lowers her blade. “What are you doing?” She asks.

“Talk. Explain.” She orders him.

“New face. New everything. New teeth, that was weird. That enough? I mean, I could talk for a long time about everything if you want me to, but if there’s one thing I’ve learnt in the last nine hundred years it’s that people like you don’t hang around in underground tunnels for fun. You said something around people needing freeing? Because helping people that need freeing? That’s my speciality, protection from gorillas is just a sideline, and you two look like you need some help.”

* * *

There are many things distracting Clarke that morning. Factions in the mountain men and the grounders are both trying to erode the edges of the peace deal they negotiated, the Ark survivors are still unhappy about their position in the coalition, there are people claiming Jaha has returned, and a thousand other things are happening, all of which or none of which could be important.

None of them are quite as distracting as the thought of Lexa still sleeping in the rom next door. After everything that got in their way, they finally had a night to themselves, a night to be together and finally belong together, a night that promised so many more days and nights to follow.

She’s so lost in her thoughts she barely notices when Titus walks into the room, can barely understand the things he shouts at her, the accusations he makes of her. She sees the other door open, sees Lexa sweep into the room and she feels an unaccountable wave of dread wash over her as Titus reaches inside his pocket, his face like an avatar of death, Lexa rushing to her side as he points what he takes from it at them.

They stare silently at each other until Clarke breaks the heavy silence. “Are you threatening me with a banana?”

He looks from her to his hand, where he seems even more shocked than she is to see a piece of yellow fruit in there. In that moment of shock and confusion, she and Lexa move together, bringing him down to the ground and quickly binding him.

“He had this.” A voice from the doorway says. “But I thought a healthier option would be better.”

Clarke looks up and sees a man by the door, holding a gun between his fingers the way someone else would hold a dead rat. She’s never seen him before, all jutting chin and pile of hair, but he’s familiar in his incongruity. “Doctor?”

“Just passing through, looking for Oswalds, need to get back to the monastery.” He hands her the gun. “Look after that, or destroy it, whichever you prefer. Keep it away from people like him, at least. You’re doing good, but that always gets the worst sort of people annoyed.”

They’re too busy keeping Titus under control to notice which direction he leaves him, but she hears that wheezing, groaning sound echoing through the tower.

* * *

There are too many of them. The architecture of the city is too overwhelming, too confusing for her to navigate. Lexa knows it’s all down to her, this is the reason for the Commander’s entire existence, but they thought they were too safe and took too long to notice the threat and all the while ALIE made too many into her followers right under their noses. Now Clarke is leading that last free handful as they fight to protect her body in the real world, giving the chance to do what she was born to do.

Despite all her life leading her to this moment, Lexa is failing, overwhelmed.

And then Clarke is by her side.

“How?” She asks.

“The Doctor.” Clarke says. “He’s here. He…connected me to you, to the Flame. It’s complicated.”

“Explain later.” She says. There’s fighting to be done, and a world to be saved, and with Clarke by her side it isn’t easier, but it becomes possible in the way all things seem when she’s at her side.

“You have to go alone from here.” Clarke says when they reach the portal. “Only one of us can go through.”

“But you-“

“Will be waiting for you. I love you.” Clarke kisses her, and after that, it’s easy.

When she opens her eyes it’s to a face she doesn’t recognise and a silence in her mind she hasn’t known since she was a child. The face is old and gaunt, surrounded by a thick nest of hair, and she knows it’s him before he tells her “welcome back to the land of the free.” She has questions, so many questions, but the first and most important is answered when he stumbles out of her vision, pushed aside by Clarke, happy and alive and crying and so very real in her arms.

“We had to take the Flame out of you.” The Doctor says. “I’m sorry, but the combined presence of you and Miss Griffin was too much. It burnt out.”

“It did what it was meant to do.” She says, as she begins to recognise the implications of that for her.

“Time to go then. The vault won’t look after itself.” The Doctor is accompanied this time by a hairless and irritable man.

“This is Nardole. He’s not very happy but he’s very useful at lots of things, like shutting down nuclear power stations that are on the verge of catastrophic meltdown.”

“And dealing with radioactive polar bears.” He says, pointing to a tear on the sleeve of his thick coat. “I’d only just had that arm replaced.”

When they leave, she feels a sadness and senses that something has ended, but then she looks to Clarke and takes her hand, sharing a joy and freedom neither of them had ever expected to find.

* * *

Clarke wakes in a darkened room a familiar sound breaking through the fabric of her dreams. It’s faint, like an echo of the times she heard it before, but then suddenly there’s light in the room, a glowing beacon near the ceiling and then beneath it a blue box wheezing and groaning its way into existence with a heavy thud. She feels Lexa stir beside her, waking to the same bewilderment as they look towards the opening door.

“…from the 58th century right back to here! It worked! I’m good at big projects, I should do more big projects.” She’s surprised to hear a woman’s voice, and then to see her, short and blonde and talking non-stop, another woman following her, though she has the sense to look shocked when she glances towards the bed. “Right, quick look round, check nothing’s blown up or gone wrong then off we’ll hop on. What?”

“Doctor. We’re in someone’s bedroom and they’re looking at us.”

She turns, smiling as she sees them, and Clarke wonders just how she manages to recognise someone she’s never seen before. “Oh, hello you two. Is this where you’re living now? I like farms, I grew up on one. Well, the most recent time I grew up I did. Much nicer than the tower, never did like being high up. Definitely wasn’t aiming for your bedroom, so sorry about that. Oh right, introductions. That would help. Yaz, this is Clarke and Lexa, they’re old friends of mine, Clarke and Lexa, this is Yaz, she’s my – well, she’s my Yaz, really.”

Clarke smiles at the other woman, who gives them a little wave and seems to be carrying enough embarrassment to make up for the Doctor’s complete lack of it. “What’s wrong this time? Why are you here? Are we in danger?”

“Oh no, absolutely not. This was just a flying visit, checking things out.”

“Checking what out?” Clarke asks.

“See, there’s something I didn’t – I couldn’t tell you when I was here before because this was a splintered timeline, and I was trying to fix it. If you knew that, it wouldn’t have worked.”

“A splintered what?” Lexa asks.

“Timeline. See, I’m a Time Lord. No, I used to think I was a Time Lord. Anyway that’s not important right now.” She shakes her head, like she’s physically forcing a bad memory away. “You see, I travel in time and space and all of that is like a great big ball of…time and space, and usually everything comes together and stays in the ball, but sometimes little splinters come off it and that’s what you were living in.”

“Just nod and don’t ask questions.” Yaz says. “She never answers them anyway, and it all makes sense eventually.”

“Dunno what caused it. Might have been the Nestene, might have been the War. Splinters normally just fade out and dwindle into nothing as the timeline collapses until you’ve just got a few people left who don’t realise they’re the end of everything. And that’s not a pleasant ending for anyone, is it? So what I thought was, what if I try and nudge this one back in so it doesn’t end but reconnects itself back to that big ball? And as we’ve just managed to get here from somewhere that wasn’t part of the splinter, that means it worked, thanks to you.”

“What does all that have to do with us?” Clarke asks.

“The thing about time is, it’s made up of history, and the thing about history is that it’s just people and what they do and think and say. So if you can find the right two people and give them little nudges to make sure they trust each other, and then that means they can love each other and then you make sure one of them doesn’t get shot and then that means they can help each other when they really need it... If you can do all that, then they might just push this timeline away from a dismal ending and allow it to merge back into the regular timeline.”

Clarke feels her wife’s arms tighten around her, and she realises all the different paths they could have taken, the ways they could have failed. She squeezes her back, reminding herself what a miracle her presence, their life and this peace are. As she looks at the woman sitting at the end of their bed, she’s warmed by the way the Doctor smiles as she looks at them, but in her eyes she sees thoughts and calculations Clarke cannot begin to comprehend. “Thank you.”

“All part of the service.” The Doctor says, jumping to her feet. “Right, we should be going, let you get back to sleep. Have a lie in, it should be a lot quieter for you two from now on.” There’s a look between her and Yaz, raised eyebrows, shrugged shoulders and a smile that all communicate something between the two of them in a language of familiarity. “Unless…”

“Unless what?” Lexa asks, and Clarke can almost feel the way her curiosity is rising because she knows her own is too.

“Surprising amount of space in here.” Yaz says, gesturing to the box, and Clarke has a memory of seeing something impossible behind those doors. “Can always squeeze in two more.”

“Lots of worlds need saving.” The Doctor says. “And you two seem to be good at that.”

“Is it dangerous?” Clarke asks.

“Sometimes.” The Doctor says.

“But always amazing.” Yaz adds.

She looks to Lexa who looks back at her, both their eyes asking the same question. They no longer owe anything to anyone else, only each other, and the universe is calling.

“Yes.” They answer together.

**Author's Note:**

> https://blah-de-blah-de-blah.tumblr.com/


End file.
